For roughly two decades, a battered 1970s Coca-Cola machine sat on the sidewalk outside Broadway Locksmith on East John Street in Seattle's Capitol Hill, and nobody seemed to own it. Drinks cost 55 cents back in 2002, climbed to 75 cents by 2014, and reached a buck right when Seattle rolled out its sweetened-beverage tax in early 2018. Six unlabeled "mystery" buttons spat out off-brand and discontinued sodas. The locksmith provided the electricity. Employees swore they had no idea who was filling it.
Then, on June 29, 2018, it was gone. Crews had been doing maintenance work on the nearby curb, and when they finished, the machine had vanished with them, according to the Wikipedia entry tracking the whole strange saga. Whoever took it left a note that read "Went for a walk." Around the same time, the machine's Facebook page posted an update of its own:
Going for a walk, need to find myself. Maybe take a shower even.
An employee at Broadway Locksmith pointed out that the machine was wired in carefully enough that pulling it out had to be deliberate. Since then, the Facebook page has occasionally posted doctored photos showing the machine perched at the Space Needle and lounging next to the Eagle sculpture. A 2022 image showed it looking dinged up. By August 2023, nobody at the locksmith had seen it in person again.
Allison Williams of Seattle Met wonders whether Capitol Hill is even weird enough anymore to host this kind of mystery. Probably not. But for twenty years, somebody loved a janky vending machine enough to keep it stocked with Hawaiian Sun and discontinued Squirt, asking nothing in return except 55 cents and your willingness to be surprised.
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